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Stereotypes About Women You Should Ignore

I watched Seth Macfarlane host the 85th Academy Awards or The Oscars and cringed several times as he made fun of women for being too figure-conscious, too old and for baring their bodies.

In fact, the opening number, which was funny for a bit, until I realized how grossly inappropriate it was, was “We Saw Your Boobs”, a song and dance routine. It was almost like a glamorous version of Mr. Skin, a website that chronicles which actresses have gone naked in which films and the duration of the scene. So in a way Seth said that if these actresses thought they were doing some groundbreaking work, they need to think again, because the men just wanted them to flash their boobs.

There was so much wrong with that event and Seth’s crude, unpalatable humor. He didn’t even spare a nine-year-old Quvenzhané Wallis, who was nominated for the best actress category, going on to say that it won’t be long before she sleeps with Clooney in a movie. He didn’t show mercy to Rihanna either, who recently got back with Chris Brown. Yes, she sought sympathy for being beaten up by her boyfriend, but got back with her abuser anyway. That is her life. But that doesn’t mean she doesn’t deserve any more of our sympathy if history repeats itself. To be specific, he said this: “Django Unchained is the story of a man fighting to get back his woman, who has been subjected to unthinkable violence. Or as Chris Brown and Rihanna call it, a date movie.”

Macfarlane had a lot of laughs at the expense of women that night. At one point he almost said that women can never let go, painting them as whiny and demanding. It got me thinking and I came to a conclusion that even today we are not so nice to women, the “we” being us men. We have always had the habit of compartmentalizing them; dictating how they should live their life, assigning specific roles for them to follow and nothing beyond. And when they do try to break out of the mould, we judge them, call them names. This practice is not only prevalent in India, but everywhere in the world.

These gender stereotypes got more prominence after the recent Nirbhaya episode, where a journalist went to 30 odd police stations trying to know what the top cops thought about women and rape. The things they said were shocking: She must have asked for it; I am sure women love to seduce men and when the man acts on the invitation women claim they were raped; they just like attention; if they had been really raped they would be ashamed and won’t come to the station to report. If the people, who are supposed to protect them, have such ignorant, ludicrous thinking, no amount of Nirbhaya fund (allocated in the recent budget) is going to be of any help.

There are numerous stereotypes against women that we are fed growing up and even later: they chatter, they nag, they are highly emotional, they can’t drive a car, they love to gossip, need hours to dress and so many others. These blanket statements or generalizations are not only wrong but are completely untrue. It’s not the women, who need to change, what needs to change instead is our attitude. We need to get out of the mindset that women are the weaker gender, that they can never be as good as a man. And we have the audacity to think like this when it is them who give birth. And any woman, who can take that kind of pain and come out on the other side, can’t be weak.

Mother Teressa, Oprah, Maya Angelou, Medha Patkar, Indira Gandhi, Sunita Wiliams, P.T. Usha…I can go on. These are only some of the names that have shaped the world, who have proved that just because they are women doesn’t mean they are any less significant. World over women are proving that there is nothing that they can’t achieve. Take Malala for example, the 15-year-old girl who was shot in the head by Taliban because she supported women’s education; or Bibi Asha, the Afhgan girl whose face was mutilated because she tried to leave her abusive husband. These are extraordinary acts of bravery, which prove you don’t need to be a man to have guts.

We need to start with ourselves. We need to stand up for the women in our life. It could start with something as simple as not encouraging a friend passing a comment about the shape of a colleague’s a**. We need to stop such behavior. A line has to be drawn. Let’s take a pledge today, with the International women’s Day around the corner, that we will be more respectful of women, and that we shall treat them as our equals. We shall not objectify them, or see them as a thing to be drooled at in an item song.